The Not Very Intelligent Design of The Idiot Donald Trump

Idiot Donald Trump unaware of Dunning-Kruger effect

Many people are using the term, “The Idiot Donald Trump”. Many more are merely saying that Donald Trump is an idiot. His Chief of Staff, John Kelly, is reportedly one of them. It’s also reported that Kelly regularly mocks Trump’s ignorance.

The Idiot Donald Trump with Kelly

Rex Tillerson was fired after refusing to deny that he called The Idiot Donald Trump a moron. (Although it may have been because Tillerson angered his erstwhile sponsor and medal-awarding buddy, Vlad Putin.)

Good Boy Badge for Rex

So how did an idiot get to be President of the United States? James Clapper says it was because of Putin. And James Clapper’s one of the few people who’ve seen more than enough classified information to allow them to reach that conclusion.

Rex and Vlad laughing at the fool

Although Putin supplied the last straw, a significant minority of voters do actually support Trump. They believe Trump’s a straight talker. Because Trump tells them he’s a straight talker. The fact that The Idiot Donald Trump contradicts himself on a regular basis and straight out lies the rest of the time seems to elude them.

America is in the process of providing evidence that humans may not yet be sufficiently intelligent, on average, to ensure the survival of a decent democracy.

The following excerpt from Not Very Intelligent Design discusses the Dunning-Kruger effect and a perfect example, The Idiot Donald Trump –

INTELLIGENCE

Below average intelligence. To utter those words in public is to risk being chastised by any social justice warrior who happens to be within earshot. But half the population does have a level of intelligence that falls below the median, regardless of how you define intelligence. It’s merely stating the obvious. An indisputable fact. At least among those who don’t need to redefine words in order to try to explain their woolly thinking.

It’s said that if you don’t know who the mark is at a poker table, you’re it. It’s the same thing for intelligence. If you can’t tell who the stupidest person in the room is, you’re probably it.

But that doesn’t take into account the Dunning-Kruger effect. Which explains why the stupidest person may believe that they’re actually the smartest. The reason for this is that really stupid people have such limited knowledge that they have absolutely no idea how much they don’t know. Which can cause them to think that perhaps they know a fair bit about something when in fact they know very little.

People who score 95 percent or more in exams, usually estimate their result will be two or three percentage points below their actual score. Because they know exactly what they got right and don’t give themselves the benefit of the doubt on things that they may have got right by luck or guesswork. People who score 75 to 90 percent generally estimate they’ll get pretty close to what they in fact score. They’ll know what they got right, and add a few points for things they may or may not have guessed correctly. People who score 50 or less usually overestimate their result, sometimes by a lot, because they’ll give themselves credit for all their answers, even though a lot of them will be wrong.

Einstein, or somebody else, said that one of the effects of a great amount of learning was that it made one aware of how much one still didn’t know. Which is not a realization that occurs to the brutally ignorant. As Bertrand Russell said, “One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.”

Donald Trump is pretty much always the stupidest person in the room, or in fact the stadium, but nevertheless he rates himself as a genius. Nobody, believe me, nobody demonstrates the Dunning-Kruger effect more effectively than Trump. The most extreme example the world’s ever seen. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it. Never. Thinking everybody else is not as smart as him might explain why he tells so many lies. He thinks people won’t know he’s lying. About a third of the population rate Trump as a straight talker who says what he means. They also don’t recognize that he’s a barely-literate ignoramus. Which is testament to the first paragraph in this section. And that they are so stoic in their support is testament to the above Bertrand Russell quotation.

If you’ve spent any time in conversation with stupid people, you’ll realize that the designer of mankind once again failed in terms of dishing out a reasonable amount of smarts to a reasonable amount of people.

Thankfully the highly intelligent minority have contributed disproportionately to the advancement of humankind and civilization, and with the collective pooling of knowledge since the invention of the printing press, that advancement is likely to proceed at an ever increasing pace. There are some potential handbrakes to our continuing advancement, notably nuclear war and/or the ascendancy of groups of people who regard science and human rights as blasphemy, but hopefully those threats will not further metastasize.

Intelligence – 0/10 to 9/10 (It varies. The 10 is reserved because the most intelligent people are probably yet to be born.)

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About Neel Ingman

Neel Ingman is a writer and blogger who vividly remembers the fear of being a young boy who was taught to believe that God could read everybody’s mind. He also remembers the terror of having swearwords arrive unbidden into his consciousness whilst sitting in church. Along with merely thinking of the forbidden words came the urge to shout them out. A temptation he struggled successfully to resist. At least in church. It was a temptation similar to the feeling some people get atop a tall building or cliff. Neel has also managed to resist this temptation. So far.